


Imelda Reforms the Afterlife

by Silvershy



Category: Coco (2017)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Swearing, slight angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-11-02
Packaged: 2019-08-11 12:27:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16475567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silvershy/pseuds/Silvershy
Summary: When they go to fetch Hector's things from his shack in the forgotten ones' slum, Imelda realizes just how badly she's treated Hector over the past hundred-odd years--just look at where he was (un)living! Naturally, the only way to atone for this is to reform the way the forgotten ones are treated. After all, even if they aren't remembered in life anymore, that's no excuse for ignoring them and letting them fall apart in the afterlife. Besides, it can't be that hard to get them better housing, food, clothing, and other essentials and make sure they are better treated by the population of the afterlife at large. Right? Right?!





	1. How the Other Half (Un)Lives

“You didn’t have to come, Imelda.”

Imelda glared at her husband. “Why wouldn’t I come? We’re just picking up your things.”

Hector shrugged and sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t have that much. Really. I can get it all myself. Or you could have sent one of the family with me.” He glanced back at where the entirety of the immediate Rivera family was trailing behind them, Imelda’s rapid pace being too much for them. “Instead of all of them.”

Imelda turned back to look. “Andale!” she roared at the rest of the family, all of whom jumped and scurried to catch up. She turned back to Hector and narrowed her eyes. “Are you hiding something from me?”

“No!” Hector said, too quickly.

Imelda made a skeptical face at him.

Hector sighed. “It’s--it’s nothing. I just don’t want you to be surprised when we get there.”

“Surprised by what?”

Hector said nothing,but he grabbed Imelda’s hand and guided her the last few feet up the hill. At the top, he motioned to the area beneath--the place where the forgotten lived.

“Surprised by that.”

For once in her existence, Imelda had nothing to say as she surveyed the place where her husband had been living for the past hundred or so years. She was dimly aware of the rest of the family catching up, bumping into Hector and herself, but she didn’t have enough presence of mind to say anything to them.

This. This was--a _slum_ . Dios, Hector had been living _here_? And…

It was all her fault that he’d been living here, among the forgotten…

Hector timidly touched her shoulder and she jolted in surprise, then turned to look at him. He looked so sad…

“We--” she swallowed, hard, trying to rid her non-existent throat of the phantom lump that had taken up residence in it. “We should get your things.”

She marched down the hill without looking back, although she could hear a gentle clatter of neck bones as the family looked at each other, and then the louder clack-clack of skeletons walking.

She paused at the edge of the water, not sure where to go. Hector appeared at her side. “This way,” he said softly, motioning her towards one of the ramshackle piers built over the water.

She gulped again and followed him, then stopped as cries of greeting reached her ears from three women seated around an old table. At least, it looked like a table, who knew what it was made out of.

“Hector! We were worried about you!”

“Where have you been, mi primo?”

Hector chuckled and greeted the women, saying things that Imelda wasn’t paying attention to as she continued looking around.

“It’s kind of--sad down here,” Rosita murmured behind her.

Imelda startled again. Dios, why was she so jumpy?

But the rest of the family were agreeing with Rosita in soft voices, or else looking around the slum with the same wide eyes as Imelda.

“This is my wife,” she heard, and she startled yet again as Hector’s hand materialized out of nowhere and guided her towards the women at the table.

“The one who nearly made sure you weren’t remembered?” one of the women said. All three of them gave her looks that Imelda couldn’t quite interpret.

“Now now, she’s not that bad,” Hector said, smiling. He nudged Imelda and she cleared her throat, trying to think of something to say.

“Um...hello,” she managed finally.

One of the other women laughed. “Dios, Hector! From the way you talked about her, I was expecting a little more!” The other women laughed with her. If Imelda had had cheeks, she was sure she would have been blushing in embarrassment. When was the last time she’d been embarrassed?

Right. That time when she was fifteen and Hector--no, not the time to think about that.

She was dimly aware of Hector pushing her away from the table, saying farewell to the women there. She managed a grimacing smile and a wave.

“Here we are,” Hector said as he pushed aside the curtain that served as a door to his shack. Imelda walked inside and swore as the heel of her boot caught in a hole on the floor.

“Sorry, sorry. Here, let me--” Hector said, kneeling down.

“I’ve got it,” Imelda said, pulling her foot up sharply. To her dismay, the boot stayed, as did most of her foot bones.

Hector, to his credit, didn’t laugh when that happened, merely wrestled her boot out of the hole and offered it to her. She snatched it from his hand and pushed her ankle bones back down onto her foot bones, waiting for them to click back into place.

When she was done, she looked up to see Hector looking sadly as a small collection of objects on a half-rotten wooden table. “Are you going to pack those, or should I?” she asked.

Hector shook himself. “What? No, no, these aren’t mine. They belonged to a friend of mine.”

“You should return them then. You always were terrible about returning things you borrowed,” Imelda grumbled.

Hector picked up one of the items--a femur. A _femur_? “I can’t” he said softly. “He used to live here, but--”

“But what?” _Oh no let him have been remembered let him have been remembered let him have been remembered so he could move out of this place…_

“He went through the final death.”

Imelda turned, her arms crossed as she looked at the walls, the floor, the bits of furniture. She could distantly hear the women joking around their table, and what sounded like Rosita’s voice as she made conversation with them. Someone shifted outside the door and Imelda heard more voices, Julio and Victoria, having a conversation so soft that even her keen hearing couldn’t make it out. And who knew where Oscar and Felipe had gone. She hoped not deeper into the slum, she didn’t know if she could handle looking for them…

The next thing she was aware of was Hector’s arms around her, radiating warmth as though he still had flesh surrounding the bones. “Mi amor,” he whispered. “What’s wrong?”

It was only then that Imelda realized she was crying.

“I--I--”

“It’s alright. I’ve got you, Imelda.”

Imelda leaned into him, struggling to get her tears under control. “What is wrong with me?” she said angrily, pressing her face into Hector’s tattered vest. “I don’t--”

“I know. To be honest, this is scaring me a little.” Hector put a hand under her chin and tilted her head up, smiling at her, inviting her to laugh at him, although she could see the worry in his face.

“I almost lost you,” she said. “And it was all my fault--oh Hector, I _missed_ you, and I was so angry, and I thought it would be better if everyone just forgot you, but this--” she freed an arm from his embrace and waved it around, indicating the walls, the floor, the leaky roof, the miserable excuses for furniture that dotted the small room, and by extension everything outside. Every hut in this miserable swamp, every forgotten, lonely soul who had no one to remember them.

“It’s alright,” Hector said with a shrug.

She pushed him away, her chin tilted up and her eyes ablaze. “It is _not_ alright! I should have never done that to you, I should have listened to you when you came to me, and besides, even if you were forgotten, you shouldn’t have had to live like this!” She waved her hand around again, again encompassing the shack and everything beyond. “This--this is despicable! An abomination! Nobody should have to live like this, whether they are forgotten or not!”

“Imelda, I think everyone can hear you outside--”

“Then let them hear me! I won’t stand for this! We may not be able to save the forgotten ones from the final death, but I’ll be _damned_ if we let them rot in this slum while they are still with us!”

Hector blinked at her in the silence that followed her ringing declaration. She heard the rustle of the curtain being moved back and Julio stuck his head in. “We?” he asked

“Of course! I’m only one woman, I can only do so much on my own.” She crossed her arms and gave Julio a look. “Go get everyone together, we’ll gather Hector’s things and meet you outside, and then we’ll go home and start planning how we’re going to make the forgotten comfortable while they’re still with us.”

Julio nodded and withdrew. Imelda turned back to Hector, her tears forgotten. “Come on lazybones, let’s pack you up, eh?”

“Uh...Imelda?”

“Si, mi amor?”

“I--don’t take this the wrong way, but--where did this come from?”

“Where did what come from?”

“Your sudden desire to give everyone who has been forgotten a more comfortable home?”

“Not just a more comfortable home. They’ll need resources too, for upkeep--clothes, food. Things they aren’t getting down here.” Imelda was putting Hector’s few belongings in his hammock sloth as she spoke, and tying the corners together to make a bag. “Is there a problem with that?”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“What question?”

“Why?"

Imelda paused. “I suppose,” she said softly, “it makes sense to me. To...make it up, a little. To you. And to myself.”

“You don’t need to make anything up to me,” Hector said softly.

“Maybe not. But I need to make things up to me, and this is how I am doing it.” She shoved Hector’s bundle of belongings into his arms. “Come. Let’s get home so we can start planning.”

Hector smiled. “Ay, mi amor,” he said softly. “As you wish.”


	2. Red Tape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Imelda and Hector go to the Department of Afterlife Affairs to talk to the head of housing management. Things do not go as planned.

“Good morning, Hector!”

Hector groaned and buried his head in the pillows. “Imelda...Imelda it’s too early for this…” He yelped as the covers were yanked off of him, followed swiftly by the pillows. He looked up indignantly at his wife, who was fluffing the pillows and shaking out the bedspread with brisk efficiency.

“So what? We’re dead, we don’t actually need to sleep.”

“But we _can._ And I _was_.”

Imelda turned her _look_ on him. Hector knew that look well; Imelda had turned it on him ever since they were children. One hand cocked on her hip, mouth twisted to the side, one eyebrow raised--or, well, it would have been had she still had eyebrows. But it was her _look_ all the same.

Hector sighed and slowly got off their bed. “Point taken, mi amor.”

Imelda nodded. “Good. We’re going to the Department of Afterlife Affairs today to talk about the shantytown.”

“I remember.” He watched as she finished making the bed--the bed that had been only Imelda’s for so long, and was now theirs. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t thrilled by that, by the miracle that meant he could curl up next to her and hold her in his arms again as they slept. Even if they didn’t technically need to sleep anymore.

A light smack on his arm jolted him out of his reverie, and Imelda was turning that look on him again. “Come, we haven’t got all day.”

He grabbed his hat off the hook by the door and adjusted it on his head. “I’m ready.”

The rest of the family had been spared this particular errand. As he tried to keep up with Imelda’s brisk stride, Hector admitted to himself that it was nice to go somewhere with only her. He wasn’t entirely comfortable with the rest of the family yet--Julio and Rosita had been Coco’s age when he left Santa Cecelia for the last time, and he hadn’t known their family well. They couldn’t be expected to remember him. Victoria hadn’t even been born yet. And Oscar and Felipe...they certainly knew him, but Hector got the sense from them that they hadn’t quite forgiven him for abandoning their sister, even if they knew now that it wasn’t entirely his fault.

“Are you listening to me?”

Hector shook his head fiercely to clear it, then looked sheepishly at Imelda. “Sorry, mi amor, I was distracted. What were you saying?”

“I said that I’m going to need your support with whoever we talk to. Tell them what it was like living in the shantytown.”

“Are you sure they’ll listen to me?”

“Of course they will! If they know what’s good for them.”

That was not as reassuring as Imelda probably thought it was.

He squeaked in surprise when he felt fingerbones wrapping around his own. Imelda paid no attention, as though she wasn’t aware that her hand had slipped into his, but Hector felt a warmth spread from his hand throughout his entire skeleton. He gently squeezed back, feeling a ridiculous grin spread over his face.

Imelda glanced at him and shook her head. “You’ll never keep up with me if I don’t drag you along,” she said tartly.

“Whatever you say, Imelda,” Hector said, the grin still firmly in place. “Whatever you say.”  
  


The Department of Afterlife Affairs was much bigger than Hector expected, a huge, flat-topped building covered in pale orange stucco. And so many people going in and out! He stopped short for a moment, overwhelmed, but Imelda released his hand and strode on ahead, and he had no choice but to scurry after her or risk losing her in the crowd.

They joined a line to one of the receptionists, Imelda tapping her foot impatiently as they stood. Hector glanced at a clock on the wall and watched the hands move. It was a good half hour before they reached the front of the line and the “Please Wait for Next Receptionist” sign that stood like a lone sentinel against the tsunami of Imelda’s impatience.

“Almost there,” Hector said, more to reassure himself than Imelda. She didn’t seem to hear him anyway.

“Next,” drawled the receptionist.

Imelda strode up the receptionist, Hector trailing nervously two steps behind. “Who in this building is in charge of housing management?” Imelda asked.

The receptionist was chewing a wad of bubblegum. She blew a bubble and let it pop before she answered. “In charge of what?”

_Oh no_. Hector glanced nervously at Imelda, but so far she only seemed a little irritated. That was a good sign.

“Housing management. I know there’s somebody. I’ve had to file paperwork for every member of my family that’s joined me at the hacienda here in the afterlife, so I’m sure somebody is in charge of wherever that paperwork goes.” Imelda smiled tightly.

“I mean, I guess that makes sense.” Another bubble. Another pop. More chewing.

After a minute or so of observing the receptionist chew her bubblegum, Imelda said, “So?”

“So what?”

“So, who is it?”

“Who is what?”

“In charge of housing management?”

“Oh.” Chew chew, bubble, pop, chew. “Dunno.”

Hector laid a hand on Imelda’s arm. “Imelda…”

She shook him off. “Why don’t you check?” Imelda asked. “You have one of those...things.” She waved a hand at the receptionist’s computer.

The receptionist chewed some more. “It’s broken.”

That did it for Imelda. She took off her boot and leaned over the desk so she could shake it directly in the receptionist’s face. “Now listen,” she said, the volume of her voice rising. “I know you have better things to do with your day than help me--chewing that gum like a cow chews cud, for instance--but all I need is for you to tell me who I need to talk to to discuss housing!”

As the eyes of every skeleton nearby turned to look at them, Hector wondered if the floor would do him the kindness of opening up underneath him and swallowing him whole.

The receptionist narrowed her eyes. “Security!”

  


“Well,” Hector said brightly, as they sat on the steps to the Department of Afterlife Affairs, “that could have gone worse.”

Imelda sighed. “I lost my temper.”

Hector looked at her in surprise. She narrowed her eyes. “What?”

“Mi amor, you know I love you, but I don’t remember a single moment I’ve known you where you have lost your temper and then admitted it afterwards.”

Imelda sputtered indignantly. “What--no! I have certainly lost my temper, yes, but I’ve been able to admit it afterwards! And apologize!”

Hector chuckled. “When?”

“Well, there was one time when Coco--” she paused and looked at him, suddenly wary.

Hector tilted his head. “What’s wrong?”

“I--Coco asked me once if she could learn to play guitar. In honor of you.” Imelda looked away.

Hector felt a tightness in his non-existent throat. “I--I see. And you got angry at her?”

Imelda turned back to him, looked at his face, then closed her eyes and hung her head. “It was two years after you left. I’d just heard that Ernesto had been...discovered? That’s the word they use? Anyway. I’d heard that Ernesto had been discovered, and there was no mention of you, no sign of you...I tried to send telegrams to Ernesto, tried to write him, anything. He never responded.

“I’d finally given up hope that you were coming back. That was when Coco found your old guitar. The first one, the one you had when we were young.”

Hector nodded. He couldn’t speak.

“She came running up to me, babbling about how she wanted to learn guitar like her Papa so she could surprise him when he came back and I--I--”

She trailed off. Hector opened his mouth to say something, anything, but Imelda continued before he could.

“I smashed it.”

Hector blinked. “You smashed my old guitar?”

Imelda nodded. She’d opened her eyes again, at some point, but she still didn’t look at him. “I just pulled it out of her hands and I--I smashed it on the cobblestones right in front of her.”

“I courted you with that guitar.”

“I hated myself for it immediately. But then I had to calm Coco down, and explain that she didn’t do anything wrong, that I just lost my temper, that you…”

Hector almost missed her words, so quietly did she speak. “That you weren’t coming home.”

“Imelda…”

“I buried it. I had a funeral for your guitar.” Imelda smiled a small smile, but it was a bitter thing, with no joy in it. “I sang to it. That was the last time I sang until the night Miguel showed up.”

Hector looked down at his feet. “I’m glad you told me.”

Imelda didn’t look at him, but she leaned her head on his shoulder. Hector looked at her in surprise, then slowly brought his arm around to hold her. She sighed.

“I suppose we should go home. I can send Oscar and Felipe to deal with housing management. Maybe if I write them a list of questions to ask…”

Hector thought for a moment, Later, he would digest what she had told him. Later, perhaps, they would talk more about what had happened since they had last parted in the living world--it would probably benefit them both. But for now…

“I think I have an idea on how to get in,” he said.

Imelda pulled back from his embrace enough to give him her _look_. “You have an idea on how to get in.”

“Yes.” Hector hopped up and helped Imelda to her feet. “But first we need some supplies.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who commented on/left kudos on the first chapter! You're all lovely people, truly. Again, constructive criticism welcome.

**Author's Note:**

> Whew, that's the first chapter done! If you have any constructive criticism, please let me know, especially with character voice, use of Spanish expressions, etc. Also, please don't expect regular updates, I'm in the middle of school right now, although I'll try to update when I can.


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